The new frontiers of cooking
08-10-2015
Joan Roca during his lesson at Gastronomika 2015. He presented the work he’s conducting with his brothers to extract distillates of aromas (photo by Passera)
Gastronomika 2015: there’s the recipes, the ingredients, styles and contaminations. And then there’s the Roca brothers, one kilometre above. They speak of the future, open new horizons, charm with their modest, elegant attitude. We’ve already written about Josep’s lesson on wine, nature and man in this piece, which was the highest moment in terms of culture and ethics. His big brother Joan instead offered a technical discussion worth to be noted.
Their permanent centre of gravity is Masía, «a space where a multidisciplinary dialogue is born that allows us to continue to dream, create – says the chef – It’s an incubator of ideas, a place where we train».
The Rotaval is the focus of the interest of los tres hermanos. Jordi the pastry chef extracts aromas for his desserts. Josep distillates alcohol, «we want to create all sorts of possible drinks», says Joan. The latter, instead, obtains impossible to imagine aromas, that open new frontiers for cooking, «we’re entering a beautiful world».
There are many possible developments, now these barriers have fallen. A new drink is served in the room, it’s called figamel, a sort of low in alcohol mead with prickly pears and honey (the project is called Esperit: using herbs and fruits to create new pairings with specific dishes, «we’re exploring the boundaries of maridaje as never done before»).
Then the chef mixes sugar and glucose syrup at 133°C: the result is an elastic mixture aromatised with wool extract which he then works as a paste to make it look like sheep wool. He uses it to cover a quenelle of ice cream made with sheep yogurt: a surprising dessert.
As Xavier Agulló said from the stage, the Roca brothers are now a world heritage. Unesco should wake up.
Reviews, recommendations and trends from the four corners of the planet, signed by all the authors of Identità Golose
by
journalist born in 1974, for many years he has covered politics, mostly, and food in his free time. Today he does exactly the opposite and this makes him very happy. As soon as he can, he dives into travels and good food. Identità Golose's editor in chief